This week has been challenging.
A bit of background – I have some rather wobbly, wavy mental health issues which have plagued me (on-and-off) for pretty much as long as I can remember. Bipolar II + GAD is the diagnosis I’ve been working with for the last 15 years or so, but who knows. It’s a spectrum of brain fuckery as far as I’m concerned. I’m prescribed Lamotrigine, which is a mood stabiliser, and I think it helps? It’s hard to tell now as I’ve been taking it for so long.
Basically, I live my life in waves. UPS and DOWNS.
On top of that, for about the last 5 years, I’ve had some quite debilitating physical problems. I don’t need to dive into specifics, but suffice to say they stop me being able to exercise/leave the house on a semi-regular basis, and require fairly heavy duty pain relief. Huzzah for ageing/thanks genetics!
When these two elements line up, the mental and the physical, it can get pretty hairy. When the trough and the pain combine life can seem extremely bleak. It’s isolating, it’s lonely, and it doesn’t seem like there will be a way back out. It’s strange, every time I reach that point I think it takes me a while to clock it, then I’ll realise. Ah, HERE WE ARE AGAIN.
So, this week was an exhausted every day kind of week with that odd sensation of constipated crying, if that makes sense? Like there’s definitely a fuck load of tears waiting, but the dam is holding fast.
Tuesday night I went driving for hours not crying exactly, more just gutturally moaning to myself. Literally: “UUUUUUUUUUUH!” pause to mentally berate myself and my lack of worth, achievement, and inability to fit into a world which feels for the most part truly fucking evil. Completely derealised, depersonalised and veeeeeering rapidly into dangerous territory.
“You’re a piece of shit, you’re a piece of shit, you’re a piece of shit, what’s the point.”
“UUUUUUUUUUUH!”
And repeat, and repeat, while the world outside blurs by, meaningless and uncaring.
Then on Wednesday the dam fully broke.
I woke up, blearily stumbled into the garden dragging extension leads and clippers and hacked all my hair off before I was even really awake. My reflection looked old and tired and disgusted. I chucked the hair on the compost heap, tidied up, went back to bed and collapsed. For the next hour I simply cried. From the depths, can’t breathe, might be sick crying.
Whenever this happens I’m still fighting myself inside. My mind is telling me I’m making a big deal out of nothing – attention seeking or literally making it all up. It tells me I’m pretending as I’m falling apart and completely unable to stop doing so. Dickhead, right? Get off my fucking shoulder evil brain demon. PLEASE.
Anyway, eventually it passed and my head stopped shouting at me. That was when I realised. It had been pretty much bang on 365 days since I broke up with my ex.
I’d been dreaming about her for a few nights and they were pretty horrific dreams. The only way I can describe it is like living inside the physical sensation of being a child caught in a lie – COLD SWEAT, STOMACH DROP – whilst simultaneously being FULLY AWARE of the fact you are not lying. On repeat. Maybe not full-blown PTSD or anything like that, but definitely reliving past trauma. I hadn’t quite clocked the significance.
I genuinely believe there’s some kind of cyclical, symbolic thing going on with these brutal events and the body remembers.
So, what did we learn? The same damn lesson as every single bloody time.
It’s all waves. It’s recognising when the low hits and sitting with it. Allowing it – not fighting (easier said than done). There is no need to beat yourself up for your struggles it only serves to push you further down. It’s recognising that YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS OR YOUR EMOTIONS. They are temporary, ephemeral things which pass eventually. Also, crying is fucking great isn’t it. Thank you evolution for providing me with a steam valve to deal with all the other bullshit you bundled in along with it.
To bring it back to whoa there, who’s that? Hey, It’s me DAVIDD the musician, the brand (ugh), the name I’ve put to this thingy I want to authentically grow and connect with the world. To YOU specifically.
So, let’s finish by sharing a SICK NEW RIFF:
This feels like a cathartic, Cage The Elephant, kinda chuggy little beast. I have no words, but maybe you might? Let’s write something!
Cheers,
DAVIDD
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